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Introducing Pacemaker

Usually I’d be ending on some kind of rah-rah high note but I find myself fresh out of specific inspiration this morning. What I do have to share is glee over a new tool. It is no secret that I love stats. I have a possibly unhealthy relationship with my spreadsheets, and I get twitterpated over graphs that show my progress. So when fellow author Jessica Fox pointed me toward Pacemaker, I might’ve had a full on flail of excitement. Actually, the flail was mutual because we both love trackers.

What is Pacemaker? Well, I’ll swipe the about copy from their website:

A Simple Flexible Planner for Writers & Students

Set a Goal

Give a memorable name to your project and determine how much you want to do within your timeframe.

Set a Strategy

Want to start small? How about swallowing the frog and knocking out large workloads right away? Tell Pacemaker when you can commit more or less time to your work and how you want to approach the workload.

Sit Back

Pacemaker calculates a schedule that will help you finish on-time! No need to wrestle with spreadsheets or do manual calculations. Download your plan in iCal format or save your plan to your Pacemaker Account.

Pace Yourself

Start working towards your target. Each day counts! As long as you follow the Pacemaker schedule, you will finish ontime.

Record Progress

Record your progress and Pacemaker will adjust your workload based on how you’ve been doing. Further adjust your plan based on any new changes to your availability.

Celebrate!

You did it! Take some time to celebrate this milestone.

Pacemaker is a playful way of making peace with your writing goals. You set a word count goal, chip away at it day by day and finish on-time! You can approach your writing target in various ways to suit your style :

Steady – write the same amount of work every day.

Rising to the Challenge – start off small and increase your word count quota every day.

Biting the Bullet – bite off large chunks of your writing goal at the beginning of your schedule so that the pressure is off at the end of your schedule.

Random – each day is a surprise, you may need to complete 5 words or 500! Whether heavy or light, you’ll reach your word count goal at the end of your specified schedule.

One of the big things that Jessica and I both love about it is the setting that allows you to adjust the schedule. So, for example, I have taekwondo on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which means my evening writing time is more or less nil. So I can’t expect as much of myself on those days. This allows me to account for that. If you routinely take a particular day of the week off to mentally rest, you can account for that. There are a ton of ways to adjust the thing, and since ROW80 is all about setting your own goals, this is a tool that fits right into our mission statement and gives you a way to sort out what you need to do to meet those goals when life happens.